Livni pushes China to break with Iran | Jerusalem Post: "'If this dangerous regime ... masters the technology of developing nuclear weapons, then the stability that we are trying to build in the Middle East will vanish,' Livni said, citing Iran's support for militant anti-Israeli groups such as Hizbullah and Hamas. China backed two rounds of UN sanctions, but has since joined Russia - like it, a veto-wielding permanent Security Council member - in opposing further measures. China's opposition stems in part from its strong economic ties with Teheran, and last week China's Foreign Ministry criticized sweeping new US unilateral sanctions against Iran, saying those measures would only further complicate the situation."China, perhaps inevitably, acts more and more like the international imperial powers of the past. If the Bushies and the Demoes were not so fixed on their ideologies, this could be turned in our interest. We should quietly make it clear that China will not prodit from Iran unless Iran swe4ars off of the nuclear candy.
4 comments:
Appreciate your insights into the expanding political sphere of the PRC. Just one suggestion, I would hesitate to use a word like "Chinaman" these days, as most Chinese view it negatively. A better choice would have been to just use Ugly Chinese or China as it would have focused on the political without any ethnic or racial undertones.
It may seem like silly semantics, but the term Chinaman has been long and historically associated by most Chinese with being that of a denegrated minority underclass at the hands of racists imperialist Europeans. Most would view it with as much emotional insult and being similar to words such as Kike or Nigger. Other previously "acceptable" words that have fallen into this class of negative emotional association is the term "Paki" when referring to Pakistani, or "Jap" when talking about Japanese.
Regards,
Ralph
Very good point!
That said, it seems to me that this leaves us with NO term for individual Chinese unless we resort to ebonics! In Black English, plurals are sometime used as singulars as in
he is a police
So, the term then becomes The Ugly Chinese? That, however has its own problem doesn't it?
Politically speaking, The Ugly Chinese is considerably a much more direct counterpart to The Ugly American. Granted, it may sound forced and insensitive, but it is perceived as being more culturally neutral while the other (Ugly Chinaman) was ethnically loaded. Oddly enough, to say Ugly Irishman is relatively neutral (as opposed to the obvious bias found in Ugly Mick).
And you're exactly right in that this narrows the choice of qualifiers between China as a nation and political entity versus a person of Chinese ethnicity or origins. Americans often don't appreciate that they must make the distinction in their comments contextually in order to avoid having what they said about the Chinese political arena taken as a personal insult by all Chinese. Like Churchill once said about another Red phenomenon; "...a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."
Ralph
Words are loaded!
Imagine if I were to write this as the Ugly Jew?"
Hmm sounds like a good blog name!
Actually, this brings up a wrinkle. Brando played an ethnicf not a national role. Despite our divers origin, America is an ehtnicity. But, at least for now, the descendents of Americans are not called American unless tyhey maintain citizenshipo. E.g Liberia, Winsotn Churchill???
OTOH, Chinese, Jewish, etc are ethnicities w/o ties to a specific piece of land.
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